reading vector data into R

Using package rgdal we can use the gdal drivers to read ESRI shapefiles. As shapefiles have layers, we need to know which layer to load

library(rgdal)

## Loading required package: sp

## rgdal: version: 1.1-3, (SVN revision 594)
##  Geospatial Data Abstraction Library extensions to R successfully loaded
##  Loaded GDAL runtime: GDAL 1.11.2, released 2015/02/10
##  Path to GDAL shared files: /usr/share/gdal/1.11
##  Loaded PROJ.4 runtime: Rel. 4.8.0, 6 March 2012, [PJ_VERSION: 480]
##  Path to PROJ.4 shared files: (autodetected)
##  Linking to sp version: 1.2-1

library(mapview)

## Loading required package: leaflet

first we set our working directory

setwd('/home/ede/tappelhans/uni/marburg/lehre/2016/ss/PS_global_change')

then we can start working

shp_file <- "data/gadm_deu/gadm_deu.shp"

lyr <- ogrListLayers(dsn = shp_file)
lyr

## [1] "gadm_deu"
## attr(,"driver")
## [1] "ESRI Shapefile"
## attr(,"nlayers")
## [1] 1

gadm_deu <- readOGR(dsn = shp_file,
                    layer = lyr)

## OGR data source with driver: ESRI Shapefile 
## Source: "data/gadm_deu/gadm_deu.shp", layer: "gadm_deu"
## with 403 features
## It has 15 fields

plot(gadm_deu)

mapview(gadm_deu, color = "blue")

## Warning in spCheckObject(x): Columns CCN_2, NL_NAME_2in attribute table
## contain only NA values and are dropped.